“Lift your head,” said the man near me.
I obeyed, but kept my eyes closed.
“It is she, is it not?” said the other man, eagerly, addressing himself, doubtless, to the newcomer in the room.
“Open your eyes,” said the man near me, just a little behind me, to my left. I gather he may have received some sign from the new comer.
I opened my eyes, and found myself kneeling some feet before a seated man. He was in a dark cloak. Its hood was thrown back, but I could not ascertain his features, as he was masked, as were the other two. Aynur was before me but to the left. She was kneeling, naked, her hands behind her, presumably braceleted. Her head was cruelly held back by the hair, but one of the two men whose captive I was, he whom I took to be second amongst them. He was crouching a little behind her and to her right. His left hand was in her hair, holding her head back, and his right hand grasping the hilt of a knife, its glace at her throat. I looked again, wildly, frightened, at the seated man.
I saw him nod.
“It is she!” said the man holding Aynur. He released Aynur and sheathed his knife. Aynur’s head came forward, and she sagged, shuddering.
“Do you dare to look boldly on your master, slave?” inquired the man behind me, to my left.
Quickly, frightened, I lowered my eyes. Why had he spoken of this man as my master? I did not think that he was Appanius of Ar.
Had I now a new master? But perhaps this was in the sense that Aynur now had a new master, our masters, that she had belonged, in effect, to those who had captured us. But I, what of me? Would I not, too, in that sense, belong to them? But it seemed not. It seemed, rather, that it was to he who had come most recently down the stairs that I belonged. My submission, my obedience, all that I was, it now seemed, was his. I had been stolen, it seemed, and he was my new master.
And so it was that I knelt before him, in that secret place, far below the streets of the city, bound hand and foot, the cloak about my shoulders, concealing my body.
I knelt very still.
I did not move as I feared to dislodge the cloak. I was afraid it would slip from my shoulders. I did not know what the sight of my body might do to him, a man of this world, what activities, what agencies, what behaviors, it might precipitate. These are not tamed men, these Goreans. They are brutes, beasts, men of power, men of passion and violence, of inordinate desire, men who relish and celebrate women in every fiber of their being, who take them in hand, and deliciously completely uncompromisingly, own them, and master them.
He regarded me, not speaking.
Aynur had lifted her head. Perhaps she, naked and braceleted, envied me the cloak. One of the men, he who was first amongst the two, as I understood it, was still behind me, a little to my left. The other was before me, still a bit behind and to the right of Aynur. But both were now standing.
Both Aynur and I were helpless. We might as well have been chained in a market, or have been in heavily barred, triple-locked capture cages.
“Would you care to see her?” asked the man near me. He bend down, and his large hands, reaching about me, were on either side of my neck, on the edges of the cloak, near my throat. With a simple movement he might have drawn the cloak down and away, slipping it back and to the sides. I tensed. But the seated man made tiny gesture, a negative gesture. The man behind me removed his hands from the cloak and straightened up.
“She is pretty,” said the other man, encouragingly.
I did not understand why the cloak had been put about me. I did not understand why, now, it had not been removed. Nor, I think, was this clear to those who had been my captors.
I bit my lip, a little. I knew what it was to be looked upon, to be assessed, to be examined, as a female and a slave. But now I was frightened, for I feared my value to this new comer, he who had been announced to me as my master, had little to do with whatever features or properties I might possess as a woman in bondage, with such things as beauty, intelligence, character, personality or talent. There was, I feared, a different interest in me, one which might be far more sinister or insidious, one far less immediately intelligible than those associated with the typical, obvious values of a slave.
“Very pretty!” urged the second man.
I had been taught to present myself well in chains, or ropes. I had been taught to turn well on the slave block.
But it seemed such things were of little interest to the new comer.
Desperately I looked at him, trying to read his eyes. You must understand that we literally belong to the masters, and that they may do with us as they please. I hoped that he would be kind.
“She begged for use,” said the man behind me. “She had to be cuffed.”
I feared I detected contempt in the eyes of the newcomer.
I put down my head.
“She is a hot little slut,” said the second man.
I looked up, angrily. Could I help myself? And had I not been enslaved? And had my needs not been ignited and enflamed by men? Had they not detected and revealed my most profound erotic secrets? Had they not released me from myself? Had they not, indeed, forced me, with whip and chain, to become my true self, the needful, hungering, passionate self of my dreams? They had not permitted me to hide! Why then was I to be criticized? It was they who had put me in the collar!
“We have kept her starved of sex,” said the man behind me, “as you ordered.”
Why would have ordered that?
Our eyes met and I quickly lowered my eyes and head, before that fierce gaze. I looked down, fearfully, docilely, humbly. I was a slave.
The seated man then, suddenly, rose to his feet.
I looked up, frightened.
But he paid me no attention.
He reached within his cloak and drew forth a leather pouch. It seemed heavy. It was apparently filled with coin. He tossed this to the man behind me whom I then understood as being surely he who was first of the two who had captured Aynur and myself. The captor did not even count the coins. That the sack had been given to him by the man in the mask was apparently a sufficient guarantee of the integrity of the transaction. They, I gathered, unlike Aynur and myself, had some sense of he with whom they dealt. They might not know his identity, but they were apparently adequately assured of the validity of his credentials, at least as being those of some contact in question, of his reliability, of his right to conduct certain businesses.
“There were two collars of gold,” said the man behind me.
The newcomer made a tiny gesture, granting them such trivial objects. The collars would doubtless be melted down. Either was doubtless worth more than many slaves, doubtless more than I and perhaps more even than Aynur.
No longer did we wear collars of gold.
No longer were we pleasure-garden girls.
Now, about our necks, as though we might be the least of common girls, were hammered simple rings of iron.
“What of this slave?” asked the second man, indicating Aynur.
Aynur turned wildly toward the newcomer.
He would make no claim upon her.
Aynur, wildly, desperately, in terror, threw herself to his feet.
“Please, Master,” she begged, “keep me!”
But he stepped away from her, and, when she looked up, it was the two captors who stood over her.
“Have mercy, Masters!” she wept.
“You have served your purpose,” said the second man.
“A girl may serve many purposes!” she wept.
“What should we do with her?” asked the second man of the first.
“We could always put her in the slave box, and return her to the porch of the house Appanius,” said the first man, musingly.